Becoming
by CreatorsOfWorlds
Summary: Once there was a boy who was not named Sai, who was not a shinobi.


_A/N - Reuploading stuff - all the day long - la la la…_

_I have to admit that I love this one. Sai is a truly fascinating character to write._

_Note: When Sai's being 'interrogated' by Team Seven and he says 'my brother died of an illness' , it _really _doesn't look like he's telling the truth. Since the later-on anime flashback they stuck in makes me laugh hysterically rather than tear up, I feel obligated to put down a few of my own ideas on the subject.  
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* * *

_**Becoming**_

_**o**_

_Childhood is the fiery furnace in which we are melted down to essentials and that essential shaped for good. _

_- Katherine Anne Porter_

**_o_**

Takumi wonders from the first time he's brought into Root (dirty and half-feral and terrified to death even though he'd never admit it to anyone, but it took only a week and the slow, gentle smiles from the nurse-mother who is assigned to watch over his class and the overtures of friendship made by a boy named Shin for him to settle down happily and stop ducking his head whenever anybody looked at him) how long it will take for him to become a shinobi.

Shin can average up the most likely amount of days and weeks and months in his head, but every time Takumi does something way too gullible and trusting and generally _naive_ he rolls his eyes and the numbers go up again, and finally he tells him in exasperation, "Stop being so nice!"

"There's nothing wrong with being nice," Takumi points out because he's discovered ever since he had somebody to argue with that he likes doing it; "Kaa-san says we ought to be polite." Kimiko, the nurse-mother, had laughed and ruffled his hair the first time he'd called her that like the other kids did, and he'd tensed up because he wasn't used to it, but he thought that he'd kind of liked that, too.

"There's a difference between being polite and between - aargh, never mind -" and there goes the inevitable eye roll again, and Takumi watches with interest and wonders whether one day Shin's eyes will roll right out of his head, and if so, what it will look like. The idea intrigues him so much that he fetches paper and ink and spends the rest of the evening drawing stick figures and random little balls that make Shin wrinkle up his nose and demand, "What's that?"

Takumi has heard some of the older members say that for shinobi, discretion is the better part of valor, so he doesn't tell him.

* * *

Takumi still doesn't know how long it will take for him to become a shinobi at eleven years old; all he knows is that for once it doesn't seem to matter because whenever it is, it won't be soon enough to let him catch up to Shin, who is receiving his Initiation early at the age of thirteen. He'd always thought that they'd graduate together, and it scares him a little, the idea that his best friend and big brother might be leaving him behind, because for whatever reason he's not good enough…

Kimiko finds him hiding behind the door of his dormitory with loose sheets of paper that he's aimlessly smudging with ink and tears, and she pulls him out and hugs him. "You were supposed to go through the Initiation together," she tells him then, in a serious voice, "that's how it's always done, with the ones as close as you two are - but Shin is needed for something very important. And you're not _quite _ready, Takumi."

Takumi looks down at the palms of his hands, tough and slightly scarred from years of practicing with grips of leather and metal, and gave a quiet, dispirited sigh. Patience might be a virtue for a shinobi - that's another thing their senseis are always telling them - but Takumi's not so good at the waiting and not being impatient thing, even after all these years, and maybe that's the reason Shin had left that morning without him. "What's the Initiation like?" he asks, even though he knows what the answer is going to be.

Kimiko laughs a little and her arms tighten around him. "You know I can't tell you before it happens," she chides him gently. "I don't even know all about it myself - it's something special for you men. The girls have a different ceremony."

Takumi's annoyed with her for not telling him even though he knew she wouldn't - which is an irrational emotion, the part of his mind that takes notes during class reminds him softly - but she called him a man even though he hasn't had his Initiation yet, so he snuggles back into her lap even though he's eleven years and _way _too old for that, and looks down at his hands again. Dragons, he thinks. Giant snakes, like in the Forest of Death. Killer beetles. Frightening criminals, like in the special book he's been drawing Shin as a present.

For a minute, Takumi considers adding a page with killer beetles, but in the end he shakes his head and thinks that it would lower the tone.

He's heard scary rumors from some of the older kids that the Initiation is all about killing your best friend or something, just like in Kirigakure, and though Takumi indignantly told them that Konoha was ten times better in every way that the stupid Mist village, and there was no way, sometimes, _sometimes _he wonders. Especially late at night. Then he has to slip out of his bed and curl up in Shin's, and the gray-haired boy will grumble and threaten to push him out but he won't, and everything will be okay.

Anyway, Takumi thinks that if they did anything like that it was kind of careless of them to _not _let them do it together, because Shin and he have been best friends since forever, and it would take somebody a lot less observant than a ninja not to notice it. No, it was definitely the scary criminals, just like he'd planned out in Shin's special book, and he'd finish it even though they weren't going to graduate together, and maybe he'd give it to Shin when his big brother came back from this mission that was so important, and then Shin would be happy to see that he'd finally finished something, and wouldn't tease him about the half-finished drawings that littered the floor around Takumi's bed.

Takumi leaned back against Kimiko's shoulder and closed his eyes. He knew just what the final pages of the book would be now, the ones in the middle. He and Shin smiling and holding hands, because they were ninja of Root, of Konoha together, and in the dream-picture he'd be older and cleverer and a real shinobi at last, and he wouldn't ever, ever be left behind again because he wasn't _quite _ready.

* * *

Shin looks different when Takumi sees him again for the last time before he leaves; he hasn't gotten any bigger or taller, but there's something about his dangerously quiet eyes and body that reminds the younger boy of their older sempais. It makes Takumi feel a little awkward at first, and even more like he's getting left behind, but then Shin laughs and gives him a huge hug that threatens to strangle him, and it's so close to being like old times that Takumi doesn't mind that it isn't, quite.

"I'll be back before you know it," Shin tells him. "And then you can show me that book - if you're really going to finish it."

"I'll finish it."

Then there wasn't much else to say, and Shin finally turns to him with a bright, half-painful smile and touches his hand to his forehead in a simple salute. "Well - bye."

Takumi nods and clutches the book to his chest and watches his big brother until he's out of sight. Then he heads back to the dormitory that his still his and the other boys', but no longer Shin's, and settles down to study - and draw.

* * *

Shin never comes back.

* * *

It takes him months to discover the name of the man who killed him, but once he does Takumi goes to sleep repeating the name of _Orochimaru _until he can taste it on the back of his tongue and see it when he closes his eyes.

Hs drawings leap off the page and curl around him like smoke, and the first time Kimiko saw it happen she put her hand to her mouth to stifle her surprise. A few minutes later, Takumi finds himself in a private interview with Danzo, and the wonderful shock of being close to the man that every child of Root worshipped is felt dimly even through the strange numbness that's wrapped around him every since he heard the news.

"A gift," is what Danzo calls it. "Perhaps a miracle. There are old legends of such things."

He curls his hand around Takumi's where it clutches a brush and tell him, "Keep drawing."

Takumi keeps drawing. He can't stop, and it seems now that all of his pictures are finished in a few smooth strokes, a few quick flashes, but Shin isn't there to see it, and without his big brother hanging over his shoulder to comment on every twist and turn of his brush, Takumi can't think of anything to call them, so he mounts them above blank name cards and tries not to look at them often.

He carries the book everywhere with him, but it hurts too much to remember what he wanted to draw, and the middle pages are left unfinished, Takumi's image reaching out across the blank paper into nothingness.

* * *

Revenge is a completely irrational and useless thing that accomplishes nothing except to damage the one that desires it and to leave them with a pitifully small amount of satisfaction in return for the loss they have experienced.

Takumi wants it anyway.

He is distressed when he realizes this, because he also realizes that it makes him potentially unstable concerning the matter, and greatly decreases his chances of getting picked for the next mission that involves the man he hates.

He covers it up with false smiles and timely evasions, and tells himself that the only reason he wants to kill - to hurt - to damage, in some way, Orochimaru, is because it's for the good of Konoha, and only a little, maybe just a little, because he loved his big brother more than anybody else in the world.

* * *

Takumi doesn't wonder any longer about how long it will take for him to become a shinobi. He's too busy learning how to use his graceful hands and pretty face to catch the eyes of older men who like that kind of thing.

(Orochimaru favors white and gray hair. This troubles him for a short time, until he realizes that the sannin also has a peculiar fascination with the Uchiha. He stays inside by day and practices by night until his skin is as pale as a ghost.)

He's too busy learning how to navigate through dark corridors easily, how to kill silently.

(Otogakure is known for being located underground, wherever its various bases might be, and when he makes his first kill he closes his eyes and sees golden eyes filming in death.)

He's too busy learning how to search quickly and quietly for needed information, and to remember it word for word.

(Mice are small and quick and so shadowy already that if nobody looks closely they don't notice the difference, and Takumi is pleased with his jutsu; nobody else has anything like it and it increases his chances yet again.)

His own Initiation comes and goes, and Takumi is officially a full-fledged shinobi of Root, but he continues learning, pushing himself to improve, relentlessly. He'll never be good enough until he gets the one mission he wants above all others.

Sometimes he sits alone in the little above-ground studio he was given after his brother's death (and he was so grateful for the quiet, after the years in the dormitory) and traces the pages of his brother's book over and over, and tries to think of how he wanted to finish it.

He can't remember now, even if he tries.

* * *

Leaning against a cold stone wall in the stronghold of the man he hates - even though hate is an emotion he must not experience because he's on _mission _(his sempais would be severely disappointed if they'd seen how badly he'd been holding his composure during that stupid, childish interrogation his teammates had seen fit to give him, but it's all right anyway because they swallowed all his lies easily, far too easily) - the boy who has become Sai for the purposes of this mission pulls out his precious book and traces over those clumsily unfinished middle pages again.

It's never been less the time or place for finishing an old project, and if this was a training simulation he'd be failing it ten times over, but the odd similarities between Naruto and Shin and the way he's somehow allowed his childish, half-trained teammates to get close enough to him to matter, even though the closeness _hurt _too, and it nearly made him pull back inside his shell - everything that makes him an artist is telling him that _now _is the time to finish it.

And he remembers.

A few king-fisher quick strokes of ink, carefully replicating his clumsier old style rather than his current, streamlined work - and a dream stands free on the page before him, two boys who have become men clasping their hands with identical smiles.

Two shinobi, protecting Konoha.

* * *

_Ahh… backstory. Where would we be without it? Not in manga and anime, that's for sure._

_As you all know, I'm sure, I'd love to hear your opinion via reviews._


End file.
